


Little Talks

by thelittlegreennotebook



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/M, Romantic Angst, and a little bit of fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-10
Updated: 2016-05-10
Packaged: 2018-06-07 12:38:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6804820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thelittlegreennotebook/pseuds/thelittlegreennotebook
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Logic and reason have never mattered when it comes to his feelings for her — as inevitable and inescapable as the end of the world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Little Talks

**Author's Note:**

> More of a fun, post-4x20 than actual spec, because what's the end of the world without a little angst? Title from the Of Monsters and Men song by the same name. And, of course, thanks go to Sus for looking over this!

They’re standing in ARGUS headquarters when the panic starts, when they realize all of this is actually coming to an end — that for once, no matter how solid their back up, no matter how many contingency plans they make, they might not be able to make it.

The room is a flurry of activity, all blaring radars and yelling into phone receivers and running back and forth, the agency’s smartest minds trying to solve the unsolvable as they race against a clock that seems to be going twice as fast as time itself.

It seems like they’ve been at it for hours now — _days,_ even — and maybe they have. Oliver can’t remember the last time he’s seen daylight, confined within these concrete walls for the last small eternity while they try to brainstorm how to stop an unstoppable madman who has not only magic, but a whole fleet of nuclear bombs waiting at the tips of his fingers.

It would be easier if he could just _focus_ , if he could lock down every strand of anxiety that’s flooding his mind over the fact that he has no idea where Thea is, or if she’s safe, or what’s going to happen to any of the people he loves. What’s going to happen to the life that he never thought he’d have.

The rest of the people in ARGUS’s headquarters don’t seem to be having any such problems. Every agent acts with refined purpose and laser focus, selflessly and tirelessly working against an inevitable end. John can be found steadfastly by Lyla’s side, helping her run through plans and keep collected as she tries to waylay the actual, _literal_ apocalypse.

And then there’s Felicity, running her own small army of technicians, gathered in a group in the corner where they can all be found hunched over computers, typing furiously. From what he understands, she’s written some kind of mass code that works as a kind of safe cracker, trying to find the right combination to override the override Darhk seems to have placed on a global fleet of nuclear warheads.

Her face is creased with worry, bags sitting heavy under her vigilant blue eyes as she scans lines and lines of technobabble streaming across her screen. Her lip is tucked between two rows of teeth, her thumb rubbing nervously at her chin as she makes short, pointed keystrokes with her other hand here and there. Every so often she’ll shake her head and murmur to herself or pause to look up and relay a few orders. Her cavalry follows her without second guessing her command at all, and not for the first time, Oliver recognizes how ridiculous the image would look to anyone who didn't know her — leading these men and women in uniform while she sits in a bright pink top and black skirt with her heels dangling perilously from toes that are painted bright aquamarine.

Oliver feels his fingers rubbing anxiously together at his side, and he once again finds himself needing to tear his gaze away from Felicity and _damn it_ — he _cannot_ focus. The fact that it could all be gone in just under ten hours — that _she_ could be gone — it's unthinkable.

Before he knows it, he’s walking across the vast room towards her.

He’s being stupid and impossible and more selfish than anyone has a right to be, but it doesn’t matter. Logic and reason have never mattered when it comes to his feelings for her — as inevitable and inescapable as the end of the world.

She doesn’t notice him at her side until he leans towards her and wraps a gentle hand around her elbow.

“Can I talk to you for a minute?” he asks, trying to keep his voice steady.

She doesn’t glance up. “Can it wait a little bit?” she asks. “There’s something that I’m —”

“Felicity,” he says, “please?”

When she leans back to look at him, she meets his eyes for a long, searching moment.

“Yeah,” she says, nodding and sliding off of her stool, discarding her heels instead of slipping back into them. “Of course.”

He guides her swiftly through an adjacent door and into some kind of abandoned control room, the visual of her walking around barefoot in the headquarters of a top secret government organization so _Felicity_ that it makes something ache deep inside his chest. He closes the door behind them and stands with his back to her, unable, now, to meet her gaze.

“Oliver?”

“It’s going to sound stupid,” he prefaces, lacing his fingers together and bringing them to clutch the back of his head. “What I’m about to say, it’s going to sound stupid and selfish and I _know_ that. I want you to know that I know that.”

“Hey,” she says. She’s right behind him, placing a hand against his ribs to swivel him towards her. “What is it?”

He looks at her for a moment, so beautiful and poised even on the edge of the destruction of the earth. This entire time, he hasn’t been thinking about how he can’t imagine the end of the world, but rather how he can’t imagine a world without her in it. How somewhere, somehow, there is a possibility that the earth will keep spinning without her on it. Even when she left her ring on that table, even when she walked away from him, he always assumed she’d be at his side in one way or another — that no matter what, they’d be _together_ . Now, he couldn’t care less if he survives, just as long as he knows she’s _safe_ if he doesn’t.

“You need to go,” he says, his voice low and unsteady. “Please, Felicity, you need to leave.”

“What?” she asks, immediately stepping back from him. “Oliver —”

“I can’t —” he says, bringing his hands down over his head and dragging them down his face. “I can’t do anything — can’t even _function_ knowing that if you don’t leave, you could…” he shakes his head, not able to force the words across his lips. “Please, just — go with the others. Go with the ones Lyla is funneling into the ARGUS bunker, Felicity, I —”

“No,” she says, taking a step back from him. “Oliver, _no._ ”

“Felicity —”

“This is some kind of twisted Slade Wilson plan, right?” she asks. “‘Go, stay safe, but make sure to take a syringe full of Mirakuru antidote with you’?”

“Felicity —”

“And if you’ve truly lost it — if it’s _not_ — then what?” she asks, her voice getting louder. There’s a fire behind her eyes, just like he imagined there would be, the opposite of what he had dumbly hoped. “Leave everyone else here to die? Leave _you_ here to die? No,” she says, crossing her arms over her chest. “I won’t.”

“I’ll be fine,” Oliver says, a lie, a snap reaction. “But I can’t — not with you — not knowing that you —”

“Could die, right.” Felicity says, her voice so dry and apathetic it immediately sparks irrational anger inside his chest. “Who cares about the code we’ve been running for the last ten hours, trying to penetrate Darhk’s system — Lyla’s words, _not_ mine — as long as I’m safe? So you’ll push me away _again_ , and then when the end of the world is over, everything will be okay?”

“I _said_ it was selfish.”

“Oliver, it’s _insane_.”

“I can’t lose you,” he rasps out finally, desperate and raw. When he meets her eyes, his vision blurs. “I won’t lose you, Felicity.”

“I'm not leaving,” she says, arms crossed, glaring him with a resolve that will not be broken. He doesn’t know how he expected anything but that stubbornness he loves so much, but something about the familiarity of it softens him. Replaces the anger with an overwhelming grief at the thought of losing her.

Slowly, he takes a breath. Lets it out. Deflates a little bit. He never thought she would go — not _really_ — but that doesn’t make this any easier. Because what is the end of the world if not goodbye?

“I never said I was sorry,” Oliver finally says, looking back up at her again.

“What?” Felicity asks — snaps, a little, the word still riding on her anger at him.

“For what I did — for not telling you about William. I never said that I was sorry,” he says. “That I _am_ sorry. I never meant to —” but he stops, because it doesn’t matter what he _meant_ . It matters what he _did_. “I know you felt as though I didn’t trust you with it, and I understand why. I’m sorry that I hurt you.”

“Oliver…”

“I know that my timing is wrong, and that I shouldn’t have waited this long, but I didn’t know how to talk to you. Didn’t really have any right to talk to you, really, but now —”

“Oliver, _no_ ,” Felicity says. Suddenly she’s right in front of him, stepping into his personal space as if she had never stepped out of it. “You do _not_ ,” she tells him, “get to apologize right now. You don’t get to do this now. Say you’re sorry tomorrow, when this is all over.”

“Felicity —”

“ _Oliver,”_ she says, and he’s surprised to see her eyes shine with tears. “You do _not_ get to say goodbye to me like this. You _don’t_. Because —” she cuts herself off, looking away, and he can see her hand fist the hem of her skirt. “Because I love you, and because I’m still furious with you, and because I am not done fighting with you yet, okay? So just — try again tomorrow. Tell me again tomorrow.”

He swallows hard against his next breath, but it hitches in his throat anyway. When he reaches forward to uncurl her hand from her skirt, to link their hands together, she doesn’t pull away. He stands there for a moment, staring at their intertwined hands while he tries to push air back into his lungs, because the thought that she could still love him after everything he’s done — it takes his breath away. He doesn’t deserve her, but here he is, standing on the end of the earth and wanting her anyway.

“We could die today,” he finally says in lieu of all the words he wants to say to her — all the words she deserves to hear at the right time and not a moment sooner.

“We could,” she agrees.

“Or we could die fifty years from now.”

Felicity nods.

When he asks his next question, it feels bigger than just the life he wants to spend with her. Bigger than when he held that ring in his trembling fingers all those months ago. Now, his hand is steady in hers.

“Will you stay with me?”

She knows what he’s saying, knows that he’s talking about standing by his side through an impossible today and an improbable tomorrow — that he’s asking her to stick through the little things and big things and whatever else might come their way.

Slowly, she eases towards him — straining to reach him on her shoeless toes — and presses a soft, lingering kiss to his lips. If the world self-destructed right in that moment, Oliver doesn’t think it would be such a bad way to end.

When she pulls away, he keeps his eyes closed, memorizing the feel of her lips on his. Her next words come in puffs of air against his jaw.

“What else do you think I’m fighting for?”

He opens his eyes and looks down at her, his heart full. “Felicity, I —”

But she presses a finger against his lips and shakes her head, her blue eyes clear again as she leans back into him. “Tell me again tomorrow.”

When he wakes the next morning — bruised and battered and barely rested enough to open his eyes — he finds her waiting by his side, and he does exactly that.


End file.
